Help Wanted:Contact David S. Miller if you have a
Sparc to boot on. In David Miller's words,

Right now, I have my test box do the following: 1)
Print boot-up messages, 2) Determine the machine type (sun4c,
sun4m, sun4d, etc.), 3) Determine the available physical memory on
the machine and other types of information, 4) Probe the OpenBoot
PROM for devices that are on the machine. The PROM is a real win
here.5) BogoMIPS, the most important part of the port! This SUN
4/20 gives 17.94 BogoMIPS. 6) Completely map the kernel's virtual
pages. 7) Enable and flush the Virtual Address Cache.

I have a lot of the architecture-dependent
include/asm-sparc files written and am able to `make config; make
dep; make clean' on the tree. A lot of the file system code can be
compiled. Getting it to work is another story.

The current work on the Sparc port of Linux is
aimed at the sun4c machines which are based on Version 7 of the
Sparc architecture. The main difference (between machine types) is
that the MMU's are accessed in a different fashion in V8 and
onward. Fortunately, Version 8 memory management (for sun4m) is
defined by the V8 manual “The Sparc Reference MMU”. I am attempting
to make sun4m support easy to just plug in later. Yes, this means
multi-processor support and all that entails. Although no such
machines will exist before mid `95, I am doing some of my code with
the Version 9 Sparc in mind: better prepared than not.

I have been trying to coordinate my code with Linus
such that we don't buck heads in the kernel tree, so to speak. Eric
Youngdale and Linus have been extremely helpful in deciding how
best to integrate my memory-management code into the current
tree.

Name: Linux/PowerPC

Linux/PowerPC is a port of Linux to PowerPC processors,
initially the 601 and 603.

A documentation specialist is needed. Knowledge of
the Linux Documentation Project, SGML, HTML, TeX, LaTeX, and desire
to learn literate programming with “noweb” are required.

Volunteers having PC-class RS6000 machines or IBM
PowerPersonal PCs are needed for boot and kernel testing and to
write or port device drivers.

The Apple PowerMac porters mostly have a
cross-development environment (not freeware). Access to the Mac's
ADB internal bus specifications appears imminent, as Apple now
seems willing to release the information under certain
conditions.

With the addition to the project of some Motorola
PowerStacks (on order) and their soon-to-be owners at year end,
`94, the PowerStack part of the Linux/PowerPC port is beginning to
come together. A GNU cross-development tool set, targeted at the
PPC, has been started.

Many thanks go to Northwest Nexus
(info@halcyon.com) for
supporting the Linux/PowerPC Project by providing the author's net
access. Thanks also to MicroApl Ltd. (London, UK
(MicroAPL@microapl.demon.co.uk
)), makers of PortAsm assembler source translators, for their
contribution.